A journey down the rabbit hole of Rubik's-style puzzles

UPDATE: I just received a set of color stickers from Oliver Nagy’s shop, and prefer them over the ones described below. Review here.

About a month ago, I wrote about my crazy idea of having custom center cubie stickers made for my cubes. Cubesmith offered that service at one time, and now doesn’t. Bummer. Not one to give up easily, I reached out to handful of sticker sites. The quotes I got back varied widely, from $19 to $625. Yes, six-hundred dollars! In (very partial) defense, those more expensive ones included one-time art, silkscreen fabrication, and die-cut tooling charges that would not appear on repeat orders. And those would have been exceptionally high quality stickers with precision screening akin to the Cubesmith logo stickers.

Alas, not willing to throw hundreds of dollars at this project, I settled on one of the cheaper options: 123Stickers.com. For $20.00 plus $4.95 in shipping, they quoted 180 custom-sized (0.61″ square with rounded corners) CMYK (multi-color) stickers on vinyl with a UV coating. I submitted my order, got back a proof, and waited a couple weeks. The stickers arrived yesterday, and I quickly photographed them and stickered the bottom face of a Zhanchi (the other stickers are a Cubesmith fluorescent set):

Overall, I’m pleased. The sticker quality seems very good, and the UV coating solid. The die cut was the perfect size for a Zhanchi (Cubesmith’s .625 stickers are just a tad big for Zhanchis, but I use them anyway). The stickers are thicker than the Cubesmith ones — maybe a full twice as thick. That would bother me on edge or corner pieces, as I would catch the raised edges. On a center piece, it doesn’t bother me at all. If I had any complaint, it’s that the print quality (if inspected closely) is a tad grainy — almost like ink jet printing instead of laser or screen printing. The flip side is that the CMYK printing allowed me to use a second color (#A0A0A0 gray). With that process, I assume I could have done full-color stickers for the same price. I should also mention that the customer service at 123Stickers was remarkably and unexpectedly good. A welcome surprise, especially at this bargain price.

For anyone looking for custom cube stickers, I would highly recommend 123Stickers. Let me know how it goes….